Save Time Cooking This Holiday Season with HelloFresh

For most families, the holidays is a busy time of the year. One of the tasks that can be a bit cumbersome to manage at this time of year is weekday meal preparation. With everyone’s busy schedules, prepping and cooking a fresh, healthy meal may be the last thing you feel like doing night after night. HelloFresh knows how busy this time of the year is for families. They want to help with their flexible subscription service that provides yummy recipes featuring fresh ingredients that get sent straight to your door every week. I asked if these meals could help save my family time cooking during the holiday by trying their service for two weeks. I gladly accepted their offer.

Photo Credit: hellofresh.ca; HelloFresh logo.

I reviewed HelloFresh last year and I absolutely became a fan! Planning out what we were going to eat for that week became really simple since we only had to think about four nights a week versus seven of them. Since most of the ingredients are premeasured, the time spent in the kitchen is considerably reduced. My family’s favourite part about HelloFresh was the variety of meals we got to savour. Each one was different and delicious!

For this review, my family received two weeks’ worth of meals to cook and enjoy. I was really excited to see which culinary delights waited for us within our boxes.

With each week’s order you receive three meals to cook and enjoy. Each week’s shipment arrives in a refrigerated box to help keep ingredients cooler for longer. The recipes for each meal lays on top, with the produce separated from the meat (if selected). The meat sits upon a bed of ice packs to keep cool while being shipped.

HelloFresh shipment box on a counter.

HelloFresh recipes on top of packaged food in shipment box.

Packaged meat on ice packs.

There have been a few subtle changes to the way in which how the ingredients were shipped to my home. Before, the items for each meal were placed in smaller boxes to be separated once they arrived at your door.

HelloFresh meal ingredients box 2016.

Now, the produce for each meal is separated into durable paper bags instead of the boxes. I loved this change as it made taking the items out of the shipping much easier.

HelloFresh produce paper bags.

When it came to preparing and cooking our meals, HelloFresh makes these tasks simple. The recipes for each meal are broken down into six steps to follow. Each meal should take about 30 minutes to create from start to finish.

Since my family had six meals to try, it was hard to choose just one or two as family favourites. For a fun night, we loved the ease of the Pork and Apple Burgers. They were so easy to make and we didn’t feel guilty about eating burgers and fries for dinner.

Pork and Apple Burger with Potato Wedges and Side Salad meal complete.

What surprised me the most about this recipe was the addition of the apples to this burger. We were curious as to how much of a difference they would make to the overall flavour of the dish. There was a subtle sweet flavour, enhancing the flavour of the pork. The potato wedges and side salad brought this meal together and we have a fabulous time eating them.

Pork burger patties cooking in a cast iron pan on a stove.

Pork and Apple Burger Potato Wedges and rosemary on a cutting board.

Pork and Apple Burger side salad apples and greens.

The meal that surprised us the most has to be the One-Pan Chicken Pot Pie. It was the perfect family meal to make you feel warm and cozy on a dreary late fall evening. I was not sure how easy it would be to put together a meal like this since the dumplings acting as the crust for this dish was to be made from scratch.

One-Pot Chicken Pot Pie meal complete on a table with a napkin and utensils.

From start to finish, this meal was simply spectacular! Having many of the veggies and the chicken prepped and premeasured gave me a sigh of relief. It would have taken much longer to cook this meal if this step had not already been taken care of for me. Besides the dumplings, everything else went into the pan to cook before placing them in the oven to cook. We savoured every bite of this dish and will be on our minds for years to come.

One-Pot Chicken Pot Pie vegetables cooking in a pan on a stove.

Dumplings being placed on Chicken Pot Pie filling.

One-Pan Chicken Pot Pie Dumplings and filling on a spoon.

Overall, having some of our weekly meals prepared for us ahead of time by HelloFresh really helped us save time cooking. With the produce and meat prepped and the steps to put each recipe together at your fingertips, each meal was a breeze to create. The best part of this experience had to be the variety meals within each box shipped to your home. They ranged from cozy family-style meals to fun meals to savour. It was truly a pleasure and a time saver for my family with each meal we ate! A subscriptions would also make a great holiday gift idea this year.

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Disclaimer: I received products from HelloFresh in order to conduct this review. The views I shared are my own.

A HelloFresh Giveaway!

HelloFresh shipment box on a counter.

Want to save time from planning a meal for your family this holiday season? HelloFresh would like to give one Ottawa Mommy Club follower one Family Plan meal to enjoy as part of our 2017 Holiday Gift Guide!

The ARV of this prize package is $139.99!

This giveaway is open to Canadian residents and ends at 11:59 EDT on January 5, 2018.

Good luck!

Rules: Open to Canadian residents 18 +. You have 48 hours to reply by email once you are notified as the winner. If you don’t, we will draw another entry. Prize is non-transferable. No substitution or cash equivalent of prizes is permitted. The selected winner must correctly answer a mathematical question in order to win the prize mentioned above. The Ottawa Mommy Club is not responsible for prize fulfillment and for the delivery/shipment of the prize(s) mentioned above. For our complete set of rules, please click here.

This would be an item I would get for my daughter as in the small towns in SK there is no home to home delivery and delivery trucks usually just leave every thing at our local Esso for the town to pickup from. My daughter likes a lot of veggies and her place doesn’t have an oven so it would have to be simple types like a crock pot or an electric frying pan type of meal.

I would love the Hello Fresh Pronto Plan; my schedule is insane (without the holidays thrown in), so it would be perfect. I would love some bold, flavours and recipes from all around the world; my family has a very diverse cuisine palette and would dive whole-heartedly into any meal. Thanks!

We would enjoy things like stir fries, and cuisine from different countries to try. Sometimes I don’t try recipes because I can’t find the fresh herbs required or cooking sauces in them. These meals would have them all. I love the convenience.